Soma Cruz
Soma Cruz is the protagonist of Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow, two games in the Castlevania series. Once a normal foreign exchange student, his life was flipped on its head when he was pulled into a solar eclipse, the secret prison of Dracula's fortress of evil. Here, he discovered something unbelievable: He is the reincarnation of Dracula. The player of this character also plays the Uber Ethereal and Connor. He apped Soma on March 2nd, 2014, and is the second player to do so. Background Until 2035, Soma's life was quiet but happy. His family moved to Japan when he was young, and he spent his childhood and adolescence in Hakuba City. While he was fairly sociable, his best by far was Mina Hakuba, daughter of the local shrine keeper. While he'd deny it to the heavens, Soma developed feelings for Mina, and was thrilled when they made arrangements to watch the first solar eclipse of the century together when he was eighteen. That excitement would be short lived. When the eclipse began, they fell unconscious. They awoke to find themselves standing before a menacing castle. A man named Genya Arikado appeared and explained to them what had happened. Castlevania, domain of the Dark Lord Dracula, had been sealed away inside of a solar eclipse in the year of 1999, also the eve of the vampire's supposed final demise. The evil powers of the castle had reached out during the 2035 eclipse, plucking observers away in hopes of finding a new lord. Then, the three were set upon by skeletal monsters. Arikado eliminated all but one, which Soma felled with a pocket knife. At that instant, a red orb emerged from the crumbling bones and thrown itself into Soma's chest. While was left utterly confused, Arikado immediately realized what had occurred. Soma, he explained, had the power to steal the souls of the monsters he killed, and manipulate those souls to power effects, magic, and techniques related to the skills of the slain. He refused to explain further, urging Soma to delve into the castle and fight his way to its peak -- lest he and Mina slowly perish. Frustrated but left with no choice, Soma did as he was told. Thus, the boy began to cut a swath through the dark forces within the sealed Castlevania, killing dozens, eventually hundreds, of sinister demons and grotesque monsters, stealing their souls and gaining their abilities to conquer challenges that were otherwise impossible. As he traveled, he encountered a colorful group of characters. First was Graham Jones, a missionary that had investigated the eclipse on his own free will, out of curiosity, or so he claimed. The two discussed the situation they were in, until Graham abruptly parted, leaving Soma confused, although the man seemed nice at the very least. The next was Yoko Belnades, a witch from the Church who had come to investigate the eclipse. She was able to place a name on his power: It was the power of dominance, the power of control. A dark power to be sure, but she hastily added that an evil power did not mean an evil person, soothing some of Soma's worries. Before parting ways, she left him a warning: Keep an eye out for Graham Jones, for the Church suspected that he lusted for the castle's powers. Soma was shocked, skeptical in the face of Graham's politeness, but accepted the warning nonetheless. Deeper within the castle, he found a soldier named Hammer, who had decided to, of all things, open a store in the protected front of the castle. While it spoke strange to Soma, he found the man's services helpful, even life saving. Finally, he encountered J, an older man who suffered from amnesia. Specifically, he had no recollection of his life before 1999, which led him to believe that the eclipse and its rumors of Castlevania were connected to his loss of memory. Some time after his meeting with J, he ran into Graham, and quickly asked him if the Church's beliefs were true. Graham calmly and politely confirmed that he was, indeed, after the castle's powers. He was born at the moment of Dracula's death in 1999, and because of that, he had powerful and dark magical abilities of his own. He viewed claiming the castle and its powers as his own as something natural, even fate. But when he asked of Soma's powers and received the answer, his demeanor completely reversed. He became furious and just short of violent, screaming that Soma would, could not challenge him, threatening him before fleeing. Stunned, Soma was forced to continue onwards, and when he met up with Yoko shortly afterwards, the two began to plot to apprehend him. They never got to enact it. Within the lowest levels of the castle, Soma walked in on the scene of Graham stabbing Yoko with a knife. Graham swiftly teleported away, and Soma found Yoko incapacitated but alive. Arikado then appeared, saying he would heal her and keep her safe, and that it was now up to him and him alone to reach the top and confront Graham. While suspicious that he knew more than what he was saying, Soma could not get more out of Arikado, and reluctantly pushed away his frustration to focus at the task at hand. Before he could reach the top, he had another encounter with J, whose memories suddenly came rushing to him. J was actually Julius Belmont, the man who had killed Dracula once and for all. With the castle rapidly gaining a new lord in the form of Graham, he knew that he had to take up his whip once more. While he ran off to reclaim the Vampire Killer whip, which he had left in the castle in case he should ever return, Soma finally managed to reach the uppermost section of the castle. After battling through the toughest legions of demons he had faced thus far, he managed to reach the throne room. Inside was Graham, now coursing with energy he had absorbed from the castle. Driven mad by power and fear for Soma, he screeched that he would reclaim what Soma had stolen before launching into battle. It was a long and difficult battle, one that saw the missionary resorting to taking a twisted, disgusting monster form in a final bid to fell Soma, but in the end the boy was victorious. Graham's final moments were spent in shock and despair, as he was faced with the reality that he was not fated to claim Castlevania. Despair melted into agony as the dark energies he had absorbed suddenly ripped him apart, rushing out into freeness -- before they began to converge on Soma, forcing him to absorb itself and trying to drive him mad like Graham before him. Despite being gripped with panic, Soma held on, refusing to lose his mind to the castle's power. Eventually, he managed to stem the tide of darkness, but not before a staggering amount of it had been absorbed. By then, the castle had already spoken enough. He didn't even have to ask Arikado, who he sensed watching from the shadows. Because in that moment, he knew: He was Dracula, the true lord of the castle. After calling Arikado out of hiding, the other man confessed that he had known the truth all along, but he had no intention of letting Soma take a position he did not wish to claim. He knew of a way to end this. There was a section of the castle that only the Dark Lord had permission to enter. Using his own powers to slow the flow of darkness, he urged Soma to enter this forbidden section as quickly as possible. Just before he stepped within the forbidden area, Soma was confronted by Julius. With his whip in hand, the Belmont forced Soma into combat, determined to carry out his duty and rid the world of Dracula once more. But as the battle dragged on with neither side gaining the upper hand, Soma realized: Julius was holding back. Despite how close Soma was to becoming Dracula once more, he was still Soma, and Julius did not fail to realize this. And so, he stepped down, allowing Soma to continue onwards. But not before the boy told him to make a promise, a promise that, should he fail, Julius would rise up and strike him down. Just before he stepped within the Chaotic Realm, Soma was contacted telepathically by all of the friends, new and old, within the castle. Julius, Hammer, Yoko, Arikado, Mina. All gave Soma their blessings, wishes, and hopes, confident that he would succeed. This gave Soma a sense of certainty and determination that he instantly latched on to. He could do this, he would do this, and he would not be anyone other than Soma Cruz. With this conviction, he stepped within the Chaotic Realm, making his way through the mad dimension to reach its core. The source of Dracula's power and the driving force behind all evil, Chaos. In an epic clash that few would know of, Soma dueled with a pure force of madness and malice, fighting against the world's demands that he take Dracula's throne. In the end, those calls were silenced. Chaos seemingly crumbled under Soma's might. He awoke to find himself back on Earth, Mina watching over him. It was over. He and the other prisoners of the castle had been set free, free to live their lives. Filled with relief, Soma had thought that he could put it all behind him. But a year to the day after the eclipse, his hopes were shattered. While he and Mina enjoyed a walk through Hakuba City, a strange woman appeared before them, calling Soma by name before summoning a demonic minion. Arikado then appeared, prompting the woman to form a magic barrier to prevent him from interfering, but not before he threw a weapon to Soma. Slaying three of the woman's monsters and taking their souls, the woman vanished, daring Soma to pursue her. Arikado identified her as Ceila Fortner, the leader of a cult that believed that God could only be good with a Dark Lord to be his antithesis. With the throne of Dracula still empty, she and her followers were on the move to bring about a new Dark Lord by force. Arikado urged Soma to let him handle the situation, but the heir wasn't comfortable with leaving this unattended. Getting information from Hammer proved to be useful, allowing Soma to locate the cult's base: Their own version of Castlevania, inhabited by demons and monsters summoned through portals. to be finished later Involvement After arriving into the Multiverse, Soma made a difficult decision: He refused to find a way out. He made a choice to never attempt to return to his world. He still fears that he must become Dracula, or that at least his friends, Mina in particular, would suffer under those such as Celia. By staying out of his world, the world and the cults would be forced to move on, staying away from the people he cared for. The thought of never seeing them again pained him, but the thought of them safe and sound outweighed that. With a storage full of gold and a desperate need to blow off steam, Soma decided to travel around the Multiverse for awhile. One of his first trips was to New Vegas in the Wasteland, but he found himself stuck in the slums of Freeside when he lacked enough bottle caps, the world's currency, and the robot guards did not except his gold in their credit check. Forced to find a way to either make the money or get past the guards, he was eventually led to the King, leader of the local peacekeeping gang, the Kings. The King needed someone to look into reports of two flying figures hiding somewhere in the city, and reports of people going momentarily blind that may or may not have been related. They were related, Soma discovered. The source of all the reports were two little girls: Mystia Lorelei and Rumia, a pair of youkai from the land of Gensokyo, whom were recently plucked from their homes by the Multiverse and stuck in Freeside. After a chase, Soma managed to catch the two, then chased off a group of disgruntled locals that moved in to attack the pair. Promising to keep them safe despite the trouble they had caused in the area, he gained their trust. The two decided to follow him, even after he made it into Vegas, even after he returned to the Moon. In the end, the two decided to move in with him. Merely to mooch off of him, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Shortly afterwards, Shanoa sensed Soma by chance one day, and after Rumia and Mystia tried and failed to mess with her, the two ran into each other. Confronting him with what she sensed, Soma led her and her pokemon to his home, where the two swapped parts of their stories and discussed what Dracula and his influence had done to their lives. Shanoa promised to keep his position as Dracula's heir a secret. Later, Soma heard of machines called Model Ws stirring up trouble on the Moon. Bothered by the event, and hearing that they had been traced to the Mushroom World, he chose to volunteer to bring it to an end with a group assembled by Vent and Aile. While he intended to go on his own, Rumia and Mystia snuck aboard a ship to follow him, much to his chagrin. In a group along with Cinnamon and led by Aqua, he and his roommates helped destroy a ship manned by Galleons, before tracing a Model W down in a cave. They arrived just in time to see it destroyed by a mysterious pair, Prometheus and Pandora. The two engaged the group in combat, and during the battle, Soma summoned the scythe of Death by complete accident, a weapon he's kept and used since then. The pair vanished afterwards, but not before directing the entire group to the secret base of the man behind the Ws, Albert. After a near-disastrous encounter that saw Albert's mass of Ws awakened and Vent petrified, the Ws came together to from a giant Ouroboros. Soma, Rumia, and Mystia offered to infiltrate the Ouroboros along with Aile, Aqua, and Fiona. After fighting through a wave of Galleons, the group encountered a door that would only be unlocked if everyone entered a teleporter and defeated whatever was on the other side. While Mystia had a fairly easy battle against a pseudroid named Hivolt, Rumia faced a difficult battle against another called Hurricane, while Soma was faced with a shock: Albert had somehow managed to draw upon Soma's essence to bring Dracula himself back into existence. The Dark Lord mused on how he felt a force trying to control him. That force was failing, and it gave him free reign to turn to the boy who had his powers and minions under his control. Rumia was nearly killed, until one of Hurricane's attacks damaged the ribbon in her hair. Weakening the sealing capabilities of the ribbon, the youkai undid the ribbon entirely and effortlessly murdered her with her newfound power. Soma, meanwhile, faced a difficult struggle against Dracula. An even greater match for him than Graham, the two usurped each other again and again, until Soma finally destroyed him using his own powers. While he resisted the flood of darkness that followed, the encounter left a lingering effect: Dracula, still clinging to his being, now dwells within Soma's soul, powerless but very vocal within Soma's mind. Afterwards, the group trudged on, even amidst exhaustion and confusion that spawned from their fights. They confronted Albert, who explained his mad plot to cleanse the world of life so that it would avoid the "boring" fate of evolution. Despite being backed by powerful high tech, the team's power, determination, and superior strategy carried the day. The barrier that protected him was obliterated in short order, leaving him exposed to be torn apart and devoured by Rumia. With the Mushroom World, and the Multiverse at large, a fair bit safer, the trio returned to their quiet lives. Although Soma had to get used to the Dark Lord muttering in his head, and nobody was quite sure what to think of Rumia's new powers, they eventually settled into some amount of normalcy. Soma occasionally volunteered to help people in need, the girls would inevitably follow, and absurd amounts of food were devoured by the youkai of the dusk. Seriously, you could feed a nation with how much she eats. But during the tail end of the Celestial Upheaval, they found themselves sucked into a portal. They wound up in a village in an Earth-like world, along with two other men from the Multiverse. After meeting with the locals, Soma came to a startling realization: The villagers were people that Shanoa had known before the Multiverse, which meant that he had been transported back to his own world. At first, panic had over taken him, to the point where he locked himself in a room away from everyone else and contemplated running away from town, so as to protect it and its inhabitants, plus the girls, from the danger that would surely follow the Dark Lord's reincarnation. But then, Shanoa, accompanied by Robin, came to the village, having traveled there of their own free will. Robin, drawing from his own experiences, delivered a pep talk that managed to shake the boy out of his funk. The confidence booster would prove short lived. Immediately afterwards, Death -- the confidant of Dracula -- appeared in the village and held many villagers hostage, attempting to kidnap the village elder for "insurance". He explained that something was very wrong with the world, most likely caused by the Multiverse. Powers and Capabilities Soma is most notable for his signature power: The power of dominance, Dracula's power. Fully formed, it allows the holder to control armies of monsters without effort. Currently, Soma possesses an unrefined version that only allows him to obtain the souls of those he kills, using them to use the skills of the creature it came from. He already possesses dozens of souls from his travels in the two Castlevanias, capable of using magic of all different elements, from the flames of a Flame Demon or Agni, the ice of a Frozen Shade, magic-fueled punches from Balore, and much, much more. Soma also has an uncanny ability to wield any weapon as though he had spent a lifetime mastering it. This can range from knives, to swords, to hammers and axes, guns, even less practical weapons such as scythes. He holds an entire armory's worth, as well as potions, money, and other useful items, using his Doppleganger soul, which acts as a sort of bottomless storage. Followers / Summons Rumia A youkai of darkness from Gensokyo, Rumia can be summed up in five words: Hungry, childish, and very, very strange. One of the pair that Soma found in Freeside, she's flighty and very uncaring about most things. Not a strong independent thinker, Rumia largely follows either her base instincts or whatever Mystia or, occasionally, Soma tell her to do. She prefers to stick around her friends, and its rare to see her away from Soma's side, and unheard of to see her away from Mystia. She can fly and use danmaku like any resident of Gensokyo. A predator by nature, she can tear through skin with ease with her claws and sharp teeth, and she possesses enough strength to pin a grown man down. Her powers as a darkness youkai allow her to create spheres of magic darkness, so absolute that little to no light can filter through and blinding anything within it...even herself, if she's not careful. As of the Model Ws event, the ribbon in her hair has been revealed to be a seal restricting her power. Weakened from damage and being broken from her fight with the pseudroid Hurricane, Rumia can now break the seal at will, although it will always reform fully in time. In this state, known as Ex-Rumia, her control of darkness extends. She can now devour anything within her darkness, digesting it and obtaining sustenance from it. She can also form weapons out of darkness, namely a swords and a scythe, all larger than her. Mystia Lorelei A Night Sparrow, Mystia is the other youkai Soma met and befriended in the Wasteland. Prideful and arrogant, with a trickster nature to boot, Mystia is a staggering amount of bark for nearly no bite. While she has killed humans in the past, and is potentially quite dangerous if she puts forth a lot of effort, she is usually content to toy with and inconvenience people, and is fairly spineless when threatened. A wonderful singer and enthusiastic cook, but struggles severely with reading. Along with the expected flying and danmaku, her abilities as a Night Sparrow grant her two disorienting and dangerous powers. First is her power of night blindness, allowing her to make another person incapable of seeing through any amount of darkness. Her other ability is to lace her songs with insanity inducing magic. In low doses, it causes confusion and loss of concentration. What it does in higher doses isn't entirely clear, but before she came to the Multiverse, humans were known to wander into the forests where she dwelled, hear her song and wander closer, and never be heard or seen from again. It's entirely possible that even she doesn't fully grasp the extent of her powers. Quotes * "Rule over monsters? I have no desire to do that..." Trivia * As a headcanon of the player, Soma is a big fan of spicy food, and has a high tolerance for spiciness. See also * External links * Chaotic Realm (Storage Page) * Soma on the Castlevania wiki * Rumia on the Touhou wiki * Mystia on the Touhou wiki Category:Player Characters